Tajik communications service agency has withdrawn NGN (next-generation network) licenses from all Tajik mobile phone operators and Internet providers.

On December 18, the Communications Service under the Government of Tajikistan sent a letter to all mobile phone companies and Internet providers operating in Tajikistan, ordering to cut off NGN-telephony.  

The instruction that was sent to Tajik Telecom, TT Mobile, Tacom-Mobile, Indigo Tajikistan (Tcell), Babilon M, Babilon M, Eastera, Intercom, Telecom Technology, and Komintel, in particular, notes that the communications service agency withdraws NGN licenses from all the mentioned companies. 

The companies and supervision bodies should report on fulfillment of that instruction within five days.

The instruction does not specify which NGNs should be cut off, only the NGNs for foreign IP or all types of NGNs.  

The next-generation network (NGN) is a body of key architectural changes in telecommunication core and access networks.  The general idea behind the NGN is that one network transports all information and services (voice, data, and all sorts of media such as video) by encapsulating these into IP packets, similar to those used on the Internet.  NGNs are commonly built around the Internet Protocol, and therefore the term all IP is also sometimes used to describe the transformation of formerly telephone-centric networks toward NGN.  NGN is a different concept from Future Internet, which is more focused on the evolution of Internet in terms of the variety and interactions of services offered.